Conor Williams Column: What progressives can and should learn from the tea party

Last weekend, American progressives
were all a-Twitter (and “a-Facebook” and “a-blogging,” etc)
over an online media powwow in Minneapolis. That’s right—Netroots
Nation 2011! It’s like Mardi Gras for online policy wonks! It’s a
convention where heavy-hitting lefty bloggers congregate to meet,
network, and get steaming mad about progressive political leaders. I
skipped it this year—someone had to stay in DC and mind the shop in
case Weinergate took another turn for the bizarre.

But seriously, Netroots Nation is
probably great for progressives. The Democrats are usually so
disorganized, they make demolition derbies look like well-organized,
carefully-orchestrated affairs. Any chance for those guys to
rally the faithful is well worth it. Also, I’m not going to throw
too many stones, so long as I’m
still blogging on my own glass computer screen. More
power to the bloggers who congregated in Minnesota—maybe they
sorted some things out!

Maybe…or maybe not. Perhaps it’s
because I’m teaching high school students this summer at Georgetown
University, or because I’m within a few weeks of becoming a father,
or because my back is especially sore this week, but I’m feeling
pretty crotchety about left-wing Internet optimism. I just don’t
share these progressives’ youthful faith in the Internet as a
political tool.

Don’t get me wrong. The Internet is
enormously powerful. Autocrats across the Arab world are finding this
out the hard way. The ever-quickening pace of online news makes
secrets harder to keep and information harder to control. Just ask
Hosni Mubarak, the ex-president of Egypt, who was deposed by his
country’s “Facebook Revolution” earlier this year. Ask
ex-Representative Anthony Weiner how hard the Internet makes it to
squash a rumor. If you like transparency, if you worry about
political deception, these examples are proof that the Internet is
great for modern politics.

These flare-ups are what the web does
best. Trouble is, they often don’t have any staying power. That’s
because it’s really easy to expose and confront someone on the
Internet, especially when it’s anonymous. Meanwhile, it’s really
hard to muster the courage for real political confrontations.
You can’t do those online, even if you have a top-shelf webcam.
Winning political arguments online isn’t the same thing as winning
arguments in your local community or winning elections. Progressives
seem to be losing sight of this, and it blinds them to just how hard
day-to-day politics really are.

Don’t believe me? The
biggest story out of Netroots Nation 2011 was the
public grilling of the Obama Administration’s record thus far.
Progressivism’s online warriors made their dissatisfaction clear.
Forget college loan reform. Forget the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell. Forget financial regulatory reform. Forget the limits posed by
Republican intransigence. What have you done for us lately, Mr.
President?

That’s why this doesn’t seem like a
convention for getting organized and facing the conservatives; it
sounds like an occasion for progressives to devour their own side.
Contrast the once-in-awhile discontent of Netroots Nation with the tea party’s effervescence. Conservative activists are using the
Internet too, but they’re using it to organize actual,
in-the-community events. It’s a means to a broader political and
organizational end. Some progressives seem to think that social media
is an end in itself. No need to win elections, they think, so long as
we win online. “You’ve got more votes? Well, I’ve got hundreds
of thousands of people who ‘like’ me on Facebook.”

Keep this up and progressives
will lose those real political battles. Politics is
local, and it’s also long, uncomfortable, and challenging. It
takes awkward, revealing conversations with people who might need
persuading before they join your side. It takes putting yourself on
the line and risking embarrassment. That’s what the tea party
understands far, far better than the left-wing bloggers: Netroots can
break a story, but they can’t sustain a movement like the
grassroots. With a
critical presidential election on the horizon,
progressives ignore this at their peril.

Conor Williams is a weekly columnist for The Washington
Post's "PostPartisan," blog and his own blog at www.conorpwilliams.com. A Kalamazoo native, he also writes occasional columns for the Kalamazoo Gazette. For more, follow Conor on
Twitter: @conorpwilliams.